A peek into the boudoir of a virtual fashion addict

I was excited about this post for the holidays and I hope my BVN holiday post meets the expectations of my giftie Azizaone (Aziza Harvy). She shares that she has four children and lives in Australia; someplace I have yet to see.

I looked at azizaone‘s blog and flickr and got the feeling that she is a fun loving person who likes fashion and cute things. Because of this I decided to gift her a cute Christmas card pic from inside a giant snowglobe.

Thanks to one of my friends, I was able to snap my pic from inside a very special giant snowglobe. Along with my big teddy bear friend, I wish her and her family the very happiest of Christmas’ and a fun filled peaceful new year.

Every day we wake. We prepare ourselves for our day in the expectation that we will do those tasks we need to complete. Then we return home to rest, sleep, and repeat the same actions for our next day. No matter what we engage in, we all have expectations that life will happen as it should each day, or at least somewhat close to the plan. That is living; but is it really?

When you are in the process of living each day, doing the things to provide the essentials of food, shelter, clothing, and some element of fun or relaxation, you seldom stop and think about your course or the big picture of your life. It is in the quiet times that we can take stock of ourselves. If we are lucky and are 100% honest with ourselves, we can improve the person we are.

My personal experience has not been the expected path of school, marriage, and children etc. My path has been always a bit off the ‘normal’ track. My timing in life has never been right. I sometimes wonder if I was born late and have been spending my whole life running late. I have always had the feeling as if I was behind, trying always to be the best I could be, but failing. I think of things after the fact. Maybe it’s because I am always analyzing things to see how they could be better. Perhaps that is a good thing, or just a massive character flaw. I am not sure if I will ever answer that question. The one thing I have come to realize lately is that I do finally think there is a positive outcome to all this introspection. I always strived to be a good person and thought I was, but my belief is that my recent efforts have made me become a better person. I have had the courage to really look at my actions and see the results of them on the world around me. I have made the effort to change my way of reacting to others so I am creating better outcomes, both personally and professionally. In the end this is the only thing we do control, namely the way we react to the things that happen to us.

Now comes the even harder work of getting back into the world. I deliberately, and with some level of precision, removed myself from the everyday bustle of life. I did this due to a specific event that rocked the foundation of my existence. However, as someone once said, it’s not how we get knocked down, but rather how we get back up and revive ourselves, that shows the true test of our character. I was always considered by my friends and family as the one who always managed to overcome difficult situations with ease. To be honest, I just did a great job of veiling my emotions. Those close to me were all confused at how to react to my withdrawal. As most people do when they are unsure of what to do, they did nothing. This made it very easy to pull back into my shell. In our busy, rush, rush world today, it’s amazing how easy it is to pull away from people, and how hard it is to regain that closeness once lost. Crawling back out of a self-induced isolation on your own is painstaking work. You can lose days so easily so that when you look back, what you think has been a brief period, turns out to be wasted years. As we all know, time can’t be recaptured once passed.

I suppose what I am trying to say is this… It is good to take some quiet time for yourself to consider how you are doing on the ‘life-living’ checklist. It’s ok to take some time to heal from a tough situation. Always give yourself some quiet time for reflection. However, make that pause brief, and then jump back into life before it leaves you regretting the time you wasted and lost days of being on the sidelines. Life is for the living; the good, the bad, and the difficult. Being happy is a choice, it is so worth the effort, never too late to start, and enriches not only your time in this world, but creates ripple effect of enriching and improving the happy quotient of those that are in its wake, and that is most definitely worth the time to ensure.

One of my favorite things is my garden and playing in the dirt in general. I have had time to work in my garden recently. It had been neglected this year due to various factors that kept me away from it and focused on other things. Gardens need attention or they become overgrown and/or perish. I find great comfort in gardening. It provides a lovely splash of color in an otherwise green space and it sooths me. I enjoy having a little order, a bit of chaos, and loads of color in my garden. I like to sit at the close of the day and enjoy a glass of iced tea or wine while I sit and listen to the birds having their evening trip to the feeders and bath. Life happening around me and the sounds of nature is grounding for me. This is why I missed having my garden in order this year.

Another of my favorite things is fashion. I enjoy a well put together outfit. Even more, I enjoy finding and pairing fabrics to make clothing. It is rare to find a good fabric store these days since sewing clothing is becoming a lost art. I used to love to go to the fabric shop with my mother. All the colors and textures to browse through was a joy we shared. I loved mixing and matching fabrics in different ways to create fun and unique outfits. I liked that I was wearing things I had made that no one else would be wearing. These days, with life being so fast paced, it is hard to find the time to sew much. If you do find the time, it’s hard to find quality clothing material. Most fabric shops are devoted to craft fabrics and unless you are sewing for a four year old, craft fabrics are not suitable for creating an (adult) outfit.

There was a wonderful fabric store in my home town run by a lovely young woman. She would take buying trips to New York to buy wonderful fabrics and buttons from London and Europe for her clientele. I miss that store. It was the last local shop I can remember going to that had great clothing fabrics. I suppose I will need to make a trip to New York to find a well-stocked fabric shop. I will also have to bring my wallet. Fabric is not as economical as it once was.

This love of sewing is what connected me to the world of fashion and brought me to know various designers. I loved seeing a designer look and trying to create something inspired by that for myself. I learned pattern making and how to take a pattern and adapt it for what I wanted. Vogue patterns were some of my favorites. I liked taking simple designs and using different textured fabrics and unique buttons to make something special. I was in awe of Coco Chanel. She was a ground breaker for fashion and women designers. I made myself a classic Chanel suit once and the whole time I was sewing I played Edith Piaf’s music in the background. Maybe I thought it would help my sewing be more authentic. I remember one of my first Vogue patterns was from a design by Issey Miyake. To this day I love his work. Claude Montana, Tom and Linda Platt, and so many others are a part of my pattern collection. It was so easy to look chic with such fabulous designers letting Vogue deliver their designs to the home seamstress.

The last favorite thing I will mention here is my love for a great suspense novel. While I don’t read as much as I once did, I love sitting down with a well written suspense novel. I like trying to figure out the solution to the puzzle before the final pages. I am overjoyed when a writer puts in a final twist at the end that you never saw coming, but makes sense once you read it. Agatha Christie, John Ramsey Miller, Jeffery Deaver, John Grisham, and Dick Francis are some of my favorites; all for different reasons. It’s a mystery how some of those writers can craft such detailed stories that hold you from the start to the final page. Agatha Christie was the first author I started reading at a very young age. I was totally amazed how she wrote so many books all with a different plot and each book able to take you down a path of intrigue with a flare of the dramatic that could only come from her era, yet they are still as captivating and interesting to read after so many years since they were first published.

Thank you for letting me ramble on about my favorite things. What are some of yours?

How very true. With the busy world we all live in, we can become caught up in the business of doing, and not being mindful about those whose paths we cross on our daily journey.

I was raised in a home where we were told to say please and thank you to each other. I assumed this was the way everyone was. I have noticed that there are people that do not say thank you as a matter of course. Listen the next time you are in a restaurant, on the subway, buying groceries, stepping into an elevator, or doing any simple daily activity. How many times do you hear that simple phrase?

I wanted to take a moment to thank a couple of people. Not that I don’t have many people to thank for things in my life, but these two people just happened to be two creative people I chose to use for an outfit today and it got me to thinking about saying thanks. I am wearing a dress called Eleanor. Yes, it was named this because I am a friend of the designer. Her name is Catalina Staheli and her brand is Aleutia. I think this dress is wonderful. It also come with a HUD with tons of colors which I really love! She has just begun to create fashion for SL. She is doing her best to make her brand fun, unique, and versatile. She is a bundle of energy and I don’t know where she gets it all. She always pours herself into what she is doing. I am cheering her on as she builds her business. Thank you Cat for all you do.

The second person is someone I did not know at all until I spoke with him in his store one day. His name is Ors Quan and his brand is Minimal. Ors is a wonderful designer of jewelry and a truly super person. I love his items and have just about every one of them now. I use them frequently because I love them! He has an aesthetic that is right up my alley. He is so very generous and I hope he is designing things for us for many years to come. Thank you Ors for helping me find the perfect item for some of my styles.

I challenge you to say thank you to someone at least once each day. Remember thinking it is no substitute for saying it. Especially to those people closest to you. Most of us are not good at mindreading.

“I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.”

∼Lillian Smith∼

Yesterday I took some time to go and explore SL like I used to in my SL infancy. If you take advantage of the SL destination guide, you can very quickly find suggestions to try. There are also some great blogs out there that you can use to help speed your journey, so it makes it easy to dial up a destination.

I wanted to get outside of my box, literally, and find a location to shoot a blog picture. I remembered being on a sim recently that looked promising so I returned there to hunt for a spot to snap a pic. The sim is called Le Sixième Sens. I had no plan. I had not even selected a pose before I had the idea to do a location picture. So off I went, looking for some place to snap my style for Tres Chic. The result is below.

Once I had completed, what I thought was a cute blog pic, I decided to take a moment and just enjoy the amazing creation of Natacha Haroldsen and Yeiyaiel. This sim is truly a treat for the senses. I found this lovely field of sunflowers and tried several windlights before settling on one of Bryn Oh’s called Immersiva Grey Dust. It just captured the quiet mood of my thoughts at that moment.

I encourage anyone who enjoys exploring to take the time to visit this place. Remember, you never know how long a place will exist SL since change is a fact of our virtual life. Which reminds me, I must go back and find a donation box to help it stay.
P.S. Yes, this blog post title is a quote from JRR Tolkien

I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.

Mark Twain

I am not sure if that quote originally comes from Mark Twain or if he stole it from The Lettres Provinciales by Blaise Pascal. It does say a lot in a few short words. This is something that I struggle with. It’s not easy to convey with pinpoint accuracy what is formulating in your head onto the paper; or in this case the screen. There are so many words to pick from. Often times it’s hard to pick just the right word to make sure what you are thinking is what people read. I suppose that is why writing is considered an art form. Art is always subject to interpretation.

So today I am going to be brief and just say that I love this outfit. It makes me feel confident.

“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.”

― Anne Bradstreet

Although spring may be just around the corner, winter is flashing its icy claws this weekend to remind some of us that it still has dominion over the first month of the year. I decided to explore a few of my favorite photography sims to see if there was a wintery spot to reflect the chilly mood I was in. I found a warm and cozy wintery spot to help put me in the right setting for an outfit from Coco that spoke to my mood.

The sim I settled on is It All Starts With a Smile. I always find some little hidden place here to snap a photo. Today I found the perfect spot in one of the wintery cottages they currently have on the sim. I cozied up in a wonderful bed by Bazar that I found had a great amount of really interesting poses. If you are looking for a well-made comfy bed the Stockholm bed by Ria Bazar is just the ticket. Not only does it have some really nice poses, it has a good deal of options for the color of the pillows and blanket.

I settled in and was inspired, even though it was blustery outside. Now all I need is a nice cup of hot chocolate and some soft music in the background. I think I am warming up already.